Not sure how we are this far into the year already. Writing for me fell by the wayside as other parts of life needed more time and I wrestled with the story God is working out in our lives and reaching very near the end of my resources to put one foot in front of the other. Writing for me is one of those acts of overflow and in the end March became a month when there was no overflow in life. Thankfully I had enough left in me to send out an SOS prayer to friends and those prayers for sustenance, sunshine, laughter, and a break in the clouds were answered. Many of our big questions are still unanswered, echoed in greater waves by the cries of many in devastating situations around the world. I have been reading through Amos and am now reading Obadiah and as a family we are reading Lamentations. There is little joy to be found in those words and yet they have been places of great comfort and faith for me. The cry goes on, ‘how long oh Lord’, for suffering has been played out for centuries and millennia. God’s patience is not mine. His ways are not mine. It would be easy to wonder where He is. I am learning to look in the small quiet unseen places, the folk who are quietly getting on with life. In the hope our daughter places in planting up flower pots and sowing lots of flower seeds as the grey chilly sky envelopes our days. In those places and acts of faith I see God and trust once more for this day.
As we approach the cross and wonder how more Easters will be celebrated before Christ returns and sets all things right I am also humbled by the words in Amos 5:18 Woe to you who long for the day of the Lord. Do we really understand who God is, do we really grasp what it will mean? It brings to mind a favourite quote of mine which I have shared before and will carry on sharing from Annie Dillard.
Why do people in church seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute? … Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us to where we can never return.”
—Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters
Maybe readers out there have a confidence that I do not have but for me I read Amos 5:18 onwards and I look at the state of churches and the actions of church leaders and I wonder. I believe that Christ died for us, I believe it for myself but I cannot stop there. Not that I need to add more to my salvation but how that is lived out day to day leaves me with questions. I think of our city here in Cumbria with a crazy number of churches for the size of population and so many of them struggling with dwindling congregations and yet many folk willing to travel elsewhere to go to churches that seems alive, has community, has families. The churches locally will continue to struggle engaging families if we see church as a commodity that meets our needs or our expression of worship. It is hard being in a church with few other families and children and as a home educating family church community has played an important role so it would be easy to go to another city, to justify the travel. It reminds me of the children’s story of the hen who asks the other animals to help with planting the seeds of corn, harvesting, milling and baking and all say no but when it comes to the finished product they all want to help eat it. It is easy to treat church that way. Planting, harvesting, milling and baking though all take work, effort. Crops are dependent on the weather. Sometimes a second crop has to be planted.
This Easter may we all come back to the cross of Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday without skipping over Saturday either. Often we look for church that reflects Resurrection Sunday but that does not happen without the devastation of Good Friday and the waiting and mourning of Saturday. Maybe it is time we as God’s people and those who open God’s word for us got more comfortable with the words of Amos, Obadiah and Lamentations. Maybe we find community in people who don’t mirror our life stages and we pray for our children to find their place in the people of God regardless of age. Maybe we let church reflect God and not us this Easter
Joshua's Tree Rooted 